SCP-2421 / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-2421.

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(account deleted) 25 Jul 2015 01:24

The entity will consume approximately 30 humans over a two day period once per month and will expand its feeding area should humans be scarce

D-Class fed to SCP-XXXX

Should there be a shortage of D-Class during feeding episodes then civilians are permitted to be used at the discretion of two members of Level 3 personnel

Hasn't the Foundation tried to kill this? I mean, 30 people once a month for a year - that's 360 people sacrificed to the dark underlord every twelve months. Wouldn't this warrant the research of additional containment options, if not termination? The report doesn't really specify how implacable the thing is. Even 682, the immortal reptile who literally can adapt to any threat, is contained relatively easily in a vat of acid. Although, 682 tends to be a bad example.

Still, I think the point is made.

SuperJotunn 25 Jul 2015 01:34

Well, I thought that this extremely large creature which is about a minimum of 100 m underground wouldn't be easy to get at to kill. Like, how do they get down there to kill it? It's not going to be coming up to be nuked and it can burrow through the ground pretty quickly even if they do get down there so catching it even if they got underground probably wouldn't be easy.

That's just what I reckon, I think if it was more easy to get at then the Foundation would probably at least try and kill it.

The LolMe 28 Jul 2015 02:08

We are already extracting gold from mines 3,900 m deep; getting a nuke down 100 m shouldn't be difficult, less for the Foundation. Also, how fast could it move? since its speed is not mentioned. If it is to fast, then earthquakes should be the biggest concern for the Foundation rather than its predatory state.

SuperJotunn 28 Jul 2015 03:46

In the current state i'd say that they just wouldn't try and kill it because 5 or so D-Class a month to keep the status quo isn't much of a price at all. You do make a good point though, it probably wouldn't be that hard for the Foundation to get down there if they wanted. I just think in the current iteration of the article they wouldn't have enough motivation to bother.

Edit: I also imagine it would be pretty quick for a big thing but not exceptionally so or fast enough to be causing earthquakes.

Last edited on 28 Jul 2015 03:51 by SuperJotunn Show more

KholetteDrake 25 Jul 2015 06:15

The Foundation hasn't tried to kill it because Secure, Contain, Protect. Not Slaughter, Cut, Perforate. That said…

I downvoted for two reasons: one, redactions and blackboxing in the containment. How is someone supposed to know where to contain it if that information has been hidden? Two, it breaks suspension of disbelief in that this creature feeds exclusively on humans. People haven't been around that long. Even less time have people been in places where this creature would feed. It would be a truly breathtaking series of circumstances that caused evolution to select for a humans-only diet when it lives in areas that A) have hot springs and B) have humans near those hot springs. Then there is the numbers thing. In order for it to get enough energy from humans to drive its 300 meters of body, it would need thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of us each day.

Although, I do like the implication that the people it eats are living it up in a sunny paradise inside it.

SuperJotunn 25 Jul 2015 06:34

To be honest I kind of personally don't buy the idea that the Foundation wouldn't try and kill a thing if they had very good reason to think that would help with the "Protect" part in a big way. I think that they're pack rats and they do want to secure and contain anomalous things, but sometimes termination is the best option. Not always but sometimes. That's neither here nor there just a thing I think.

I can undo the blackboxes and give a name for what hotels are actually there, that's a fair enough criticism. The redaction I don't think is an important thing though. You still know how it's being contained. If they're going to actually have to deal with it then they'll have the clearance to know exactly where it is. That's just my thoughts, I can change it if a lot of people think i'm wrong in that.

I know this isn't present in the article but my idea is that the creature hasn't always been on earth/in this dimension, it popped up because there's intelligent life on this little chunk of rock to render certain services to them. And I feel like I can be handwave-y about extradimensional creatures' daily intake needs, especially because it's not actually eating any of the people that are going down the tube.

I'm glad you like the end and you have fair enough reasons for downvoting, those are just my thoughts in reply.

KholetteDrake 25 Jul 2015 17:56

I know this isn't present in the article but

See, that actually makes it more interesting. I realise you are going for a short-form contest entry here, so you're limited in what you can do with it by the space available. I just think your idea is bigger than the format allows.

As far as redactions go, my observation has been that the current trend is to avoid hiding any part of containment, since those are the instructions that are used to contain a thing. The in-universe corollary to that is that if someone is reading an article, they have the clearance to know about it.

Given what you've said here, I'm gonna novote for now, but I hope you'll expand on this once the contest is over. It really could be a source of some neat logs and such.

SuperJotunn 26 Jul 2015 01:16

You do make fair points about the redactions in the containment procedures and i've decided to just sort of chop out the geographical bit because i'm completely unfamiliar with the south of Russia. I was kind of using that just because one of my inspirations for this was those strange holes in the ground there's all these pictures of from Russia.

I've also added a sentence or two to try and give a bit of an indication of the things i've said here so that it's actually contained in the article. Expanding it might be fun once the contest is over and if I have some good ideas about what to do then i'll definitely do my best to do that.

Thanks for your feedback

sirpudding 27 Jul 2015 02:48

I know the number was greatly reduced but really they would basically never need civilians even at the original numbers. China has executed between tens of thousands (in the 50s and 60s) and low thousands (today) every year since the revolution…

Last edited on 27 Jul 2015 02:50 by sirpudding Show more

MrWrong 25 Jul 2015 03:05

+ show block

[LOCATIONS REDACTED].

Why not "[REDACTED", which is one word less? Why not blackboxes, which do not even count as words on wordcounter.net? Minor nitpick, but I'm highlighting that.

Should there be a shortage of D-Class during feeding episodes then civilians are permitted to be used at the discretion of two members of Level 3 personnel.

While I think you're going for a horror moment, it's not really working for me since there is a certain protocol (depends on headcanon) where civilians can be inducted to D-class status if the need arise (its name escapes me currently). But I feel it will more professional if said protocol is mentioned.

Of course, name-dropping a protocol not everyone knows may not be the best thing. So make of it as you will.

Pros:

• This SCP really harkens back to the older stylistics and SCP-2086, which go all out to describe a creature's habits and all that. Nostalgic value, I suppose.

Cons:

• The horror moment that one can be fed to a monster is not that well-done. Why must humans be sacrificed? Can the Foundation not force it to adapt to the taste of a cow?

* I do agree with Whatopercy2 on the excessive loss of lives to maintain just one thing, that may not be that all important. It's quite a fallacy since one writes SCPs under the assumption that one has all the resources needed, but a real organisation like the Foundation would be eternally strapped for resources. EDIT: In light of edit, switch to neutrality.

Verdict: Neutral vote

Last edited on 25 Jul 2015 04:14 by MrWrong Show more

SuperJotunn 25 Jul 2015 03:18

I didn't write the protocol (whose name escapes me also but I am aware of it) into the civilian 'conscription' because i'm relatively certain that's a protocol in the case that D-Class are generally in short supply. I kind of meant what I said to refer to just if the particular sites in the critical 2 day feeding period didn't have enough D-Class on hand.

The horror (which was kind of eclipsed by the weird ending in my thinking) was more on the idea that before the current containment procedures this thing could literally go around anywhere it wanted and suck you right out of your gosh darn bathtub. I thought I included a line about how it doesn't try and ingest anything but people, but basically if it doesn't get people at a certain site it will just move to another area, possibly outside of Foundation supervision.

You make some points though and I'll have a think about whether I can make my justifications any clearer/more legitimate

Anaxagoras 25 Jul 2015 03:30

I was going to downvote this at the ridiculous number of people we're feeding to this thing, but the addendum stayed my hand. That's a really interesting one. Not enough for me to upvote, but enough for me to go "Huh…".

SuperJotunn 25 Jul 2015 03:40

Okay, since everybody seems to hate the number of people being thrown away per month i've toned it down a bit and tried to make the containment measures seem both more justified due to the range it was feeding prior to the current measures and that there isn't too much of an alternative at the moment.

MatthewtheLucky 25 Jul 2015 23:13

This needs some editing. There are a few sentence fragments that stick out.
Well, they appear to be gone.

Last edited on 26 Jul 2015 15:44 by MatthewtheLucky Show more

Petrograd 26 Jul 2015 11:45

Also, now that you've removed the procedures about feeding it civilians, the following seems odd:

In one incident where civilians were required to be used during a feeding episode a call was made to the Foundation-owned spa resort from the phone of a presumed-dead civilian within the entity.

Maybe something like "In one incident where civilians were unavoidably consumed during a feeding episode…"

SuperJotunn 26 Jul 2015 12:43

Oh that's a very good pickup, thank you for that

TL333s 26 Jul 2015 22:55

Nah, it's just a giant, carnivorous, underground pillbug. Not catching my interest.

SuperJotunn 27 Jul 2015 00:29

Well, if it doesn't interest you then that's okay. But carnivorous kind of implies it actually eats the things it consumes for sustenance, which isn't what's going on.

TL333s 27 Jul 2015 22:55

That doesn't make it any more interesting, sorry to say.

The LolMe 28 Jul 2015 01:31

This SCP's containment procedures feels too Series I in my opinion, and by that I mean exagerated and not neccesary.

Sure, the Foundation is not about destroying the anomalous, but it isn't about just sacrificing humans and complying with the anomalous either. Might be just my headcanon, but I would rather see the Foundation neutralizing this thing and studying its interiors rather than keeping it fed and risking it achieving whatever its trying to.

SuperJotunn 28 Jul 2015 03:50

With respect to your opinion I disagree. I think that 5 D-Class a month isn't something that the Foundation would give any more thought to than ticking a few boxes.

I also think they wouldn't risk trying to terminate something so big that is causing a relatively negligible amount of harm to the human race in case they pissed it off and made the situation worse. Sure, they ideally would make sure that there isn't a creature snatching a couple of people every month and they'd know exactly what's going on inside of it, but the chance that this could escalate the situation in a bad way is why I don't think the Foundation would try to do that.

Kalinin 29 Jul 2015 00:19

Neutral vote, since the concept is kind of silly to me personally, but I can also respect the existence of a subterranean bug that sucks people into its party zone on the mainlist.

I did find the fact that the Foundation leaps from "non-standard genetic structure" to "extradimensional" to be kind of silly. That's a completely absurd conclusion, as well as an abuse of the phrase "extradimensional" to mean "from some place what we don't know about" (albeit an abuse committed daily by just about everyone here). I also don't care for censored dates that only involve one digit of the year. Why would it be okay to know which decade something occurred in, but not the specific year? I'd consider fixing those.

SuperJotunn 29 Jul 2015 02:09

I spent a while thinking about the extradimensional bit so i'll see if I can explain the logic and maybe come up with an idea of how to fix the leap the Foundation makes.
So for starters, the creature is extradimensional. It does come from a place very much unlike our own which is not in our universe and it didn't get here by travelling spatially. But hey, I don't have in-universe ways to show that so it's a fair enough criticism to say that the Foundation makes an unjustified leap. However I do make the specification that the non-standard genetic structure "possibly suggests" the extradimensional bit, rather than stating it as something they have reached a consensus about.
Again, my expression of this could very well have way missed the mark but by non-standard genetic structure I meant something that doesn't even resemble a genetic structure in the sense that we understand it.
You can be the judge of whether I just expressed the underlying thinking poorly or whether the thinking still seems flawed.

Fair enough call about the blackboxes, will definitely get to that after the contest is over.

Eta Carinae 30 Jul 2015 12:37

Seagulls? Phone call? Have my upvote!

This started a bit meh, but it soon got interesting, then intriguing, then WTF????? and finally…!

I have a lot of questions too about blackboxing locations. I'm gonna do a bit of reading and perhaps ask the Powers That Be about it in the forum.

Anyway, good job!

SuperJotunn 30 Jul 2015 22:56

Thank you very much!

Oh yeah redacting locations would be a really cool thing to ask about, let me know what you find out in the end if you could

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